Epis­ode Num­ber: 6×09

Writ­ten by: The authors of the Shack­leton Expanse Cam­paign Guide

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 4^th Octo­ber 2025

Guest Stars:

• Lwax­ana Troi: Fed­er­a­tion ambas­sad­or and mat­ri­arch of the Troi family
• A young Betazoid girl.

Our mis­sion to infilt­rate the Domin­ion occu­pa­tion of Betazed has begun, and so have the obstacles. We’re cur­rently run­ning silent, to avoid the atten­tion of Jem’Hadar patrols near the front line.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 51748.3

Plot: Two away teams explore Betazed, look­ing for the res­ist­ance, Lwax­ana Troi and Rebekah Konin.

The ‘A’ Plot: Although they had crossed the front line at warp 2 and under cloak in the hopes of avoid­ing detec­tion, Selvek soon alerts the team that a pair of Jem’Hadar fight­ers appears to have altered course to inter­cept them. Kon­in orders the ship to sub­light, shut­ting down all sys­tems except for the cloak­ing device, pass­ive sensors and min­im­al life sup­port, in order to min­im­ise emis­sions. This seems to work as the Jem’Hadar pass them at a dis­tance and then leave at warp speed. They stay on silent run­ning for a few more hours before car­ry­ing on past the Betazed sys­tem so that they can approach it from the far side, hope­fully avoid­ing any sensor sys­tems set up to detect incom­ing Star­fleet vessels.

Clos­ing with the sys­tem, still cloaked, they risk a sensor sweep. There are not as many Domin­ion ships as they expect, and the orbit­al defence sys­tems appear to still be intact. They do detect new shipyards with attend­ant space sta­tions, and what appears to be a large Jem’Hadar clon­ing facil­ity on one of the moons. They dis­cuss wheth­er they should be caus­ing some sab­ot­age while they are there, but Kon­in feels this would be out­side their orders. Raynor points out that they could still set up some kind of event to cov­er their escape later, and the com­modore agrees. Raynor works with Elser to use the trans­port­er to plant explos­ives around the clon­ing facil­ity power sup­ply as they pass it.

Scans of Betazed itself show an idyll­ic land­scape, dot­ted with well-planned cit­ies. Betazoid lifesigns, how­ever, are rel­at­ively sparse, espe­cially com­pared to the num­bers of Jem’Hadar and Car­das­si­ans present. There are many Betazoid lifesigns present in the new shipyards, so they con­clude that they’re being forced to work for the occupiers.

Rather than try to find some­where safe to land on the plan­et, they opt to keep the cloaked ship in orbit while away teams beam down to the sur­face. The ini­tial recon­nais­sance is split into two teams: Quinn and Raynor will vis­it Rixx, plan­et­ary cap­it­al and home of the Fifth House, to try and make con­tact with mat­ri­arch Lwax­ana Troi, while Kon­in attempts to find his wife, who was being treated at the Renda Insti­tute of Neur­o­lo­gic­al Sci­ence pri­or to the invasion.

The Rixx team soon dis­cov­ers that the former ambas­sad­or is cur­rently res­id­ent on the fam­ily’s estate on the edge of the city. Unfor­tu­nately, they can­not trans­port in dir­ectly due to a scat­ter­ing field over the area. Beam­ing down to the city, they hunt for anoth­er way to get there, hope­fully using the loc­al trans­port­er net­work. They find that all the trans­port­er net­work access points are con­trolled by uni­formed Betazoid offi­cials, each accom­pan­ied by a pair of Jem’Hadar troops. Without a per­mit, it is not pos­sible to use the system.

Turn­ing their atten­tion to acquir­ing the appro­pri­ate paper­work, they begin vis­it­ing the known homes of loc­al politi­cians. Many of these indi­vidu­als seem to be miss­ing, their houses occu­pied by Vorta or Car­das­si­an officers. Any attempts to talk to the loc­als about this causes the per­son in ques­tion to leave without a word, usu­ally dis­ap­pear­ing into their own home and lock­ing the doors behind them. As they wander the city, hop­ing to find someone with inform­a­tion, Quinn real­ises they are being watched by a little girl, who smiles encour­agingly and waves before run­ning off up the street.

Decid­ing they need to anoth­er strategy for con­tact­ing Troi, they return to the ship to con­fer with the commodore.

While they are wan­der­ing the streets of Rixx, Kon­in beams down to a remote loc­a­tion high in the Renda moun­tains. Mater­i­al­ising in a forest, he walks towards the estate con­tain­ing the Insti­tute, but spots a row of sensors just inside the treeline. He bypasses them by climb­ing up into the trees, before approach­ing a mod­ern­ist struc­ture, built of white stone with extens­ive glass windows.

He sees a Betazoid garden­er work­ing next to a ha-ha and approaches him to talk. The garden­er does not seem sur­prised to see him but cau­tions that he will not be wel­come at the front door. Kon­in soon learns that the Insti­tute has been taken over by the Car­das­si­an Intel­li­gence Bur­eau, which is using it as an intern­ment site. The organ­isa­tion has become known to the Betazoids as the “Thought Police”, as it is mak­ing use of turn­coat Betazoid tele­paths to mon­it­or the popu­lace, with sus­pects being brought to Renda for inter­rog­a­tion. He tells Kon­in that he will volun­teer his pres­ence to no-one, but will men­tion it if he is asked dir­ectly, as he does not want to be tortured.

Kon­in gets close enough to scan the build­ing both by tri­cord­er and tele­path­ic­ally, determ­in­ing that there are sev­er­al dozen lifesigns, some Betazoid, but mostly Car­das­si­an. One of the Betazoids feels like his wife, but he is unable to make con­tact. Cau­tiously approach­ing the main entrance, he sees that the recep­tion desk is empty, but there is an armed Car­das­si­an guard watch­ing the door.

Return­ing to the woods, he beams back to the ship, meet­ing with the oth­ers to dis­cuss their plans. While Kon­in would like to res­cue his wife, the pres­ence of the C.I.B. means that they will need to plan care­fully, and be ready to leave in a hurry, which means they need to achieve their oth­er goals first. Kon­in decides that they should try to make con­tact with Lwax­ana Troi to dis­cov­er what is really going on.

They beam down to the edge of the estate hold­ing Troi’s man­sion, and walk sev­er­al kilo­metres along a sunken coun­try lane, before climb­ing over a fence. Check­ing for sur­veil­lance and guards, they find none, and are able to reach the house without prob­lems. As they approach the front door, try­ing to avoid being spot­ted, it opens and a tall humanoid emerges, walk­ing out into the drive. He stares at them silently, as Kon­in explains that they would like to meet Ambas­sad­or Troi, then beck­ons them to fol­low him.

He leads them into an elab­or­ate hall­way, then goes to fetch his employ­er. A few minutes later, Lwax­ana Troi appears to greet them verbally, before ask­ing the reas­on for their vis­it. They dis­cuss their mis­sion over tea in a recep­tion room to one side of the hall, once she assures them there are no listen­ing devices.

Kon­in explains that they are try­ing to find out what the occu­pa­tion is doing to the pop­u­la­tion, and make con­tact with any gov­ern­ment or res­ist­ance groups. Troi describes how the plan­et was occu­pied while the fleet assigned to defend it was decoyed to anoth­er sys­tem. A trait­or amongst the Star­fleet con­tin­gent on the plan­et shut down the defence satel­lites, allow­ing a mass deploy­ment of Jem’Hadar, and the paci­fist pop­u­la­tion sur­rendered without a fight. The invaders have installed a pup­pet gov­ern­ment led, to her etern­al shame, by her cous­in, but it has little abil­ity to help the people. Large por­tions of the popu­lace have been taken to the orbit­al sta­tions to work, while their ori­gin­al lead­ers have been detained and held in intern­ment facil­it­ies across the planet.

A small num­ber of people, how­ever, have gathered togeth­er to offer res­ist­ance, although they haven’t had much suc­cess. She explains that between her retired status and her rela­tion­ship to the new premi­er, she seems to have some free­dom, and she would like to retain that status. She does have some con­tacts, how­ever, and offers to try and arrange a meet­ing. Kon­in agrees, and the trio leave to return to the ship.

The Arc: It appears that Rebekah Kon­in may have been loc­ated, and the team have gained a valu­able contact.

Obser­va­tions: Betazed is the centre of a com­plex of orbit­al sta­tions and con­struc­tion docks, mostly con­struc­ted by the invaders, and worked by Betazoid forced labour. Three dozen Fed­er­a­tion defence satel­lites orbit the plan­et, although they now seem to be under Domin­ion con­trol. The plan­et’s second moon holds a Jem’Hadar clon­ing facil­ity, and an old defence sta­tion orbits between Betazed and the next plan­et out from their sun.

Rixx is the cap­it­al city of Betazed, and home of the Fifth House, the fam­ily of Lwax­ana and Deanna Troi. It is a city of broad aven­ues and green parks, but very quiet. Much of the pop­u­la­tion has been sent to labour in the shipyards in orbit. The Troi fam­ily man­sion lies with­in a tra­di­tion­al coun­try estate on its edges.

The Renda Insti­tute for Neur­o­lo­gic­al Sci­ences is in a spec­tac­u­lar loc­a­tion, nestled in a broad wooded val­ley and sur­roun­ded by the highest moun­tains on the planet. 

Ref­er­ences: Ambas­sad­or Lwax­ana Troi and her manser­vant Mr Homn are long­time foils to Cap­tain Jean-Luc Picard of the U.S.S. Enter­prise.

The Car­das­si­an Intel­li­gence Bur­eau makes anoth­er appearance.

Ques­tions: How will they get Rebekah Kon­in out of the Renda Institute?